Transatlantic Relations - Towards a new strategic partnership?

6th Transatlantic Editors' Roundtable in Washington D.C.

PDF-Downloads: Agenda · Participants

11.05.2006 · Improving Responsiveness

On 4th and 5th May 2006 the Centre for Applied Policy Research and Foreign Policy invited editors from the leading Journals on International and Foreign Affairs from the United States and Europe to the Editor's Roundtable in Washington, D.C. at the new offices of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The meeting was part of the Improving Responsiveness Program at the C·A·P, which is kindly supported by the GMF. It was the second time the group has met in Washington, D.C. after 1998.

Josef Janning, Francis Fukuyama, Thomas Bauer

This year's meeting brought together the biggest group of editors since the C·A·P has started its Editor's Roundtable in 1998. Participating journals were Commentary, Current History, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, ORBIS, The American Interest, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly, and World Policy from the USA as well as Europe's World, Foreign Policy Bulgaria, Foreign Policy Espana, International Affairs, International Spectator, Journal of Middle Eastern Geopolitics, Le Monde Diplomatique, Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs, Survival, The World Today, Vereinte Nationen, and Welttrends from Europe.

As in 1998, the conference advised on the question how to promote a new strategic partnership between the United States and Europa in a world of ever-changing international relations. Energy security and democracy promotion are currently two of the most important aspects in international policy. In Iraq the U.S. troops and their Allies are still fighting against insurgents and instability which cause the country to collapse. At the same time the Europeans are preparing themselves for a military operation in Kinshasa in order to secure the elections in the Democratic Republic of Kongo. Another critical topic is energy security and the supply of resources. With China and India demanding more and more of the resources from the Middle East in order to secure their fast growing economies, the Europeans and the United States have to deal with high oil prices and the question of how to secure the decreasing energy resources.

Cho Khong

In the first session Dr. Cho Khong, Chief Political Analyst from Shell International, gave the participants basic background information about the problem of Resources and Energy Security in the 21st Century. Dr. Khong presented possible scenarios for future development which were linked to energy discontinuities. The increasing energy consumption caused by global economic growth has also had an influence on developing countries. While currently their energy demand is almost the same as in developed countries, it is predicted to double in the future. With this growing pressure carbon treaties could therefore become irrelevant. In theory there are enough renewable ressources (Wind, Solar, Biomass) for 10 billion people, but practically the efficient extraction of energy from these resources is still both: difficult and expensive. Dr. Khong stated that three global players are going to influence the further development on the energy sector: China, USA and Russia. Looking at China it is interesting to see that Beijing is not only looking at oil and gas but also new models. However with referrence to the current debate about a revival of nuclear power one also has to keep in mind that there are only limited amounts of Uranium available. Consequently the use of nuclear energy will face a resource problem in the future as well. The following debate circled around this aspect and the security question of energy transport. At the present time China is developing bluewater naval forces for securing sea lanes of great importance for its supply. Hence, the participants also discussed the role of higher energy prices in order to encourage conservation of resources. This led to the question whether the current oil price was really exorbitant. Furthermore, the editors looked at their role in this whole topic. Only few articles are published concerning energy security and climate change. Complex structures and scientific details make it very difficult to combine the development of public awareness and the proposal of possible solutions in an article.

During an inofficial dinner session Dr. Heinrich Kreft, member of the Planning Unit at the German Foreign Ministry, and Minxin Pei, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discussed with the participants the future development of China. Beside the economic growth and the emergence of China as a possible new superpower both speakers stressed the fact, that internal problems of the regime could affect the progress in China in the next decades. System related problems could lead to some form of internal breakdown, if the economic growth would drop dramatically below the current level of 8% annually. For the moment the situation seems to be safe, but no one can predict the reaction of the party leaders in Beijing in case of internal difficulties. Questions to both speakers contained the role of Taiwan and India, the political orientation of the succeeding political leaders, and the possibility of aggressive external action as consequence of internal difficulties.

Francis Fukuyama

In the second official session Francis Fukuyama presented his statement on America at the Crossroad: Democracy, Power, and the Conservative Legacy. He pointed out that the United States, regarding their history, have a lot of institutional knowledge about nation-building, but the implementation of this awareness is proved to be very inefficient. When looking at the Islamic Fundamentalist Threat it becomes obvious that most extremists come from Western Europe. The identity problem of second generation immigrants, in some cases leading to a form of Muslim diaspora, raises the question of which community or society they belong to, paving the way for islamistic ideas. In the Middle East region the vast spread of media and communication technology has helped to accentuate these ideas. In the following discussion participants pointed out that the lack of institutions seems to be the real reason for difficulties when the democracy implementation is imminent. In the case of Iraq the United States made the mistake of believing that the sole removal of a dictator would lead to the overall solution. No social engineering was planned in advance. Participants of the Roundtable also stated that Eastern Europe would be a good example for effectiveness of regional integration when it comes to democracy promotion, although the integration into a custom union was an incentive Europeans could only have offered for the accession process.

Thomas Carothers

Democracy Promotion was further the topic of the third session with Thomas Carothers, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The session on Democracy Promotion: Obstacle or Aid to a U.S.-European Strategic Partnership circled around the different, in some cases even diverging understanding between Europeans and Americans how to implement democracy, and led to tremendous stress concerning the transatlantic relations. Thomas Carothers made clear, that this misunderstanding was not only about Iraq. In the early 1980's Ronald Reagan already had defined an universal democratic model in contrast to the Communist world of the Soviet Union. Back then the Europeans accused the Americans of having double standards, because the U.S. cooperated with states far from being democratic. In the 1990's the United States interest in democracy was no longer limited to a certain country. It was developed as part of a global security approach. At the same time the Europeans got more involved into the topic because they had to deal with the post-communist states in Eastern Europe. But for Europe the issue became part of an integration and enlargement process rather than a global crusade for democracy. Looking at the current situation Carothers said that the major difference between Europe and the U.S had been the European unwillingness to follow the American line of combining democracy promotion with the fight against international terrorism. During the following debate the majority of European participants neglected the point Carothers had made before, that after the enlargement of the European Union the Europeans would have lost interest in democracy promotion. They declared that their version of promoting democracy was embedded in the good governance policy of the European Union. Despite the known structural deficits the EU had spend more money on democracy promotion in the year 2000 than the United States. The discussion showed the main obstacle for finding a transatlantic approach towards democracy implementation: Europeans do not define democracy promotion as part of a global security framework.    

The last session dealt with the role of foreign policy journals in the ever-changing world of international relations. All participants agreed that we live in a complex world with more sophisticated topics. Considering the objective of providing deep background analysis it becomes clear that the main challenge for International Policy Journals today should be the publishing of readable articles for policy makers which at the same time provide the required information. The rise of China and India, the nuclear dispute with Iran, energy security, the nation-building process in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the development in Latin America are nevertheless just a few of the current challenges for international relations. At the same time the topics are no longer limited to these classical issues. HIV, climate change and energy ressources bring a new set of issues to the table. Journals therefore have to provide articles which help to understand the world at large and at the same time propose alternatives how to react to it. In addition to that the Journals also have the responsibility of training future authors to write good pieces which fulfil this task. This will definitely be a topic of next year's Editors Roundtable.   

This Transatlantic Editors' Roundtable was made possible through the support of the key institutions programs by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The German Marshall Fund of the United States is an American organisation which promotes the exchange of ideas and encourages the cooperation between the U.S. and Europe in spirit of the post-war Marshall plan.